Hiring in manufacturing has picked up since the November election, with 26,000 factory jobs added in February and 11,000 in March.

That’s in contrast to hiring done during President Barack Obama’s tenure, which was mostly in the service sector — technology, retail, business, and health, but not in manufacturing.

U.S. manufacturers are giddy “like never before,” President Trump proclaimed at a recent White House event with corporate chief executives.

However, employment in manufacturing is currently at 1940s levels.

The glory days of manufacturing were the 1970s, when more than 19.5 million Americans earned their paychecks from factory work. Since, it’s been a fairly steady decline, down to 12.4 million workers today. But overall, only 8 percent of U.S. workers are employed in manufacturing today, a big drop from 22 percent in 1970.

Some of those jobs are now done by robots, shown in how U.S. manufacturing output is at an all-time high.

Some experts point out that manufacturing employment has climbed since hitting a low of 11.5 million employees in 2009, but it's not back to pre-Great Recession levels, let alone the heydays.

“We certainly saw a sizable jump in manufacturing hiring last month,” says economist Sam Bullard of Wells Fargo. “That said, I am not so sure we will be able to maintain this current pace over the course of the year.”

Still, the manufacturing industry seems to like the President.

A recent survey by the National Association of Manufacturers found that 93 percent of its 14,000 members have a positive outlook for U.S. manufacturing, the highest level of optimism in 20 years.

First Published April 8, 2017, 4:00 a.m.